Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 386.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2025-03-05 06:01:11+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: 'knowledge'

For some time now  the noun 'knowledge' has bothered me for the
suggestion of its 'thingness' (OED s.v.: "The fact or character of being
a thing", a word that occurs as early as 1840). It suggests to me the
cognitive equivalent of a brick, as if units of 'knowledge' made a wall.
To what extent, I wonder, does the smart machine undo its permanence?
Yesterday I heard this sentence: "In its absence I know what freedom
is." -- 'know' because not lived, distant, remembered, imagined? When
engaged in research, especially now, with an inexhaustible quantity of
scholarship at our fingertips, wouldn't 'coming to know' be closer to
the condition of knowing we're in?

Comments welcome.

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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